₹89.13 Crore For 1.28 Kilometres: The PGI-Sarangpur Flyover And What It Means For New Chandigarh And Mullanpur ₹89.13 करोड़ बनाम 1.28 किलोमीटर: PGI-सारंगपुर फ्लाईओवर और न्यू चंडीगढ़ तथा मुल्लांपुर के लिए इसका क्या मतलब है ₹89.13 ਕਰੋੜ 1.28 ਕਿਲੋਮੀਟਰ ਲਈ: PGI-Sarangpur ਫਲਾਈਓਵਰ ਅਤੇ ਇਸਦਾ New Chandigarh ਅਤੇ Mullanpur ਲਈ ਕੀ ਮਤਲਬ ਹੈ

Anyone who drives from Chandigarh to New Chandigarh knows the stretch. Past PGIMER, through Khuda Jassu, into Khuda Lahora, where traffic heading for Mullanpur meets pedestrians walking on the carriageway because there are no footpaths, autos stopping mid-road, and school parking spilling onto the tarmac.

On Monday, 24 August, the Chandigarh Appraisal Committee recommended an elevated road over it at an estimated cost of ₹89.13 crore. The proposal was first made in 2020.

What was cleared

The committee, chaired by Chief Secretary H Rajesh Prasad, recommended three infrastructure projects totalling ₹176.34 crore for administrative and financial sanction. Alongside the elevated road sit a 50-bed critical care hospital at Manimajra at ₹73.89 crore and a City Forest at the Sukhna Choe Reserve Forest at ₹13.32 crore.

The road itself is a 1,280 metre, four-lane elevated corridor giving grade-separated movement over the two village stretches. The specification covers RCC and precast construction, a reinforced earth wall and solid-fill approaches, crash barriers, drainage, street lighting and road safety measures. The Chief Secretary directed departments to expedite the remaining formalities.

One number worth reading carefully. The elevated stretch is 1.28 km, but the Engineering Department's original scheme was a 1.75 km road of which 1.3 km sits on structure, running from the bridge at Khuda Jassu near PGIMER to the Botanical Garden in Sarangpur. Earlier reporting put the deck width at around 19.1 metres with a 17.5 metre carriageway. Whether the ₹89.13 crore covers the full 1.75 km or only the elevated portion is not stated in the sanction papers as reported, and it makes a material difference to what the money buys.

Why this particular kilometre matters

Khuda Lahora is not just another congested junction. The UT Road Safety Committee identified five high-congestion zones across Chandigarh and named this one the most critical choking point of the set. The other four are the Housing Board light point, Kajheri Chowk, the Hallo Majra light point and Tribune Chowk, all of which sit inside the city. This is the only one of the five on the road out to Punjab.

The elevated corridor is intended to give uninterrupted transit for traffic heading towards Mullanpur and onwards to Baddi in Himachal Pradesh. Every commute from Chandigarh to the New Chandigarh townships and to the Medicity hospitals passes through it.

The committee's diagnosis of what goes wrong there is unusually specific: no footpaths, so pedestrians walk in the traffic lane; parking around a school; encroachments along the edge; poor drainage; auto-rickshaws halting mid-road to pick up and set down; and vehicles taking U-turns at sharp cuts. Alongside the flyover, the recommended fixes include creating footpaths by shifting a school boundary wall, clearing encroachments, rumble strips at fifty metre intervals, and widening the existing road to 200 feet for traffic heading towards Mullanpur.

There is also an institutional cluster forming at the far end of the route. Sarangpur is where the PGIMER extension campus is planned, one of several projects reported for the institutional area there. If they land, this corridor stops being a village road with a traffic problem and becomes the spine of a second institutional belt.

Six years of committees

The project was first proposed in 2020 and shelved during Covid. What has happened since is a sequence of approvals rather than construction.

The UT Road Safety Committee recommended it. The Chandigarh Heritage Conservation Committee, whose remit covers the city's planned character, gave its approval, having first asked that the alignment be kept out of the sectoral grid and shifted towards the village area. The same committee later asked the Engineering Department for a three-dimensional view of the structure and for traffic data on the route. Officials said environmental and other clearances would follow before the design and cost were finalised.

The cost has barely moved across all of it. The estimate at heritage committee stage was ₹90 crore. Monday's recommendation puts it at ₹89.13 crore. That stability proves less than it appears, since a detailed project report was still being drawn up this year and no detailed estimate has yet been produced against which the earlier number could move.

What Monday's decision represents is a recommendation for administrative and financial sanction. That is a real step, since it moves the project from planning into budgeting. It is not a tender award and it is not a start date. Final approval has been described as requiring clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs, given Chandigarh's status as a Union Territory.

The other junction on that list of five

Tribune Chowk is on the same list of five choking points. It is the busiest junction in Chandigarh, carrying over 1.5 lakh vehicles a day. Its history is the closest thing available to a forecast for Khuda Lahora, and it is worth walking through because almost every assumption people bring to a project like this turns out to be wrong.

The Centre approved a consultant for Tribune Chowk in 2016. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways sanctioned a six-lane flyover, rotary and underpass on NH-05 on 11 February 2019 at ₹183.74 crore, on an engineering, procurement and construction basis. The Letter of Award went out on 19 November 2019. A public interest petition from the RUN Club was filed the following day over the felling of nearly 700 mature trees along Dakshin Marg and Purv Marg, and the High Court stayed the project on 20 November. The petition was dismissed on 30 April 2024, four and a half years later.

The UT then submitted a revised estimate of ₹245.09 crore on 28 May 2025. MoRTH sanctioned ₹247.07 crore on 24 September, which The Tribune reported as a 33.39 percent escalation over the 2019 award price, with Chandigarh separately depositing ₹35.54 crore towards utility shifting. Fresh tenders went out in October 2025.

Then the part that upends the story. Twelve bids came in, eight qualified technically, and when the financial bids were opened in 2026 the lowest quote was ₹147.98 crore from Singla Constructions, 31 percent below the ₹214.66 crore estimate against which bidding was invited. Seven years after a ₹183.74 crore sanction, the project was awarded for less in nominal terms than it was first sanctioned for.

So the ₹247.07 crore escalation was an escalation in the paperwork. The market priced the same work lower than it had been priced in 2019. That is the first thing Khuda Lahora's ₹89.13 crore should be read against: a sanctioned figure in this city is an authorisation to spend, not a forecast of what the work will cost.

The second thing is that the litigation did not end with the 2024 dismissal. A fresh petition is pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the flyover on heritage, Master Plan and environmental grounds, including the same tree felling. The Administration formally awarded the work the day before a High Court hearing.

The third is that the timeline stretched after the money was approved, not only before. At sanction in September 2025 the UT Chief Engineer put completion at 16 to 18 months from award. By the time work was awarded in May 2026, the stated build period was 30 months.

| Project | Conceived | Sanctioned | Awarded | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tribune Chowk flyover, rotary, underpass | 2016 | Feb 2019 at ₹183.74 cr; resanctioned Sept 2025 at ₹247.07 cr | LoA Nov 2019, stalled; reawarded May 2026 at ₹147.98 cr | Under construction, 30-month target, fresh petition pending |
| PGI to Sarangpur elevated road | 2020 | Recommended Aug 2026 at ₹89.13 cr | Not tendered | Awaiting further clearance |

The two projects do not travel the same road. Tribune Chowk sits on a national highway and was sanctioned and funded by MoRTH. PGI-Sarangpur is a UT budget project routed through the Ministry of Home Affairs. Different money, different ministry, different set of doors. The comparison is useful for what it says about elapsed time and about how much a sanctioned number is worth, not as a direct schedule.

What this means if you own or are buying on the New Chandigarh side

Connectivity to Chandigarh is one of the things New Chandigarh has always been sold on, and the honest position is that the drive has been worse than the marketing for years. This is the piece of road that makes it so.

Start with the part that separates this from every other infrastructure story on this site. The Aerotropolis financing, the Eco City awards, the Samgauli waste plant and the GMADA dues all have Punjab or GMADA as the actor holding the lever. This one does not. The road is on Chandigarh territory, funded from the UT budget, cleared by UT committees, and awaiting a central ministry. The single largest access improvement available to New Chandigarh property is entirely outside the control of anyone on the Punjab side of the line, and no Punjab decision can accelerate it.

Drive time claims should be read against present conditions, not future ones. A journey quoted from Mullanpur to central Chandigarh that assumes a clear run through Khuda Lahora is describing a road that does not yet exist. Until the structure is built, the bottleneck is the commute.

The associated works may matter as much as the flyover. Widening the approach to 200 feet towards Mullanpur, clearing encroachments and building footpaths are the items that change how the surrounding land functions day to day. They are also the items most easily dropped when a project is value-engineered, and unlike the deck, none of them appears in the ₹89.13 crore specification as reported.

And on the timeline, the honest position is the one the record supports rather than the one either optimists or pessimists would prefer. Nobody has gone to court over PGI-Sarangpur. But it has been through the Heritage Conservation Committee, had its alignment moved out of the sectoral grid at that committee's instruction, and still needs environmental clearance, and Tribune Chowk demonstrates that a Chandigarh road project can be sanctioned, tendered, awarded and still be in court over trees and the Master Plan. Six years of committees with nothing tendered is where this stands. The junction the same committee ranked below Khuda Lahora took ten years from conception to award.

The road is finally moving. It is worth being clear that moving is not the same as built.

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Sources

- Chandigarh: Panel clears decks for elevated road on PGI-Sarangpur route, Dushyant Singh Pundir, The Tribune, 25 August 2026, on the ₹89.13 crore recommendation, the 1,280 metre specification and the three projects totalling ₹176.34 crore
- Chandigarh heritage committee to take call on PGI-Sarangpur flyover, The Tribune, on the 2020 origin, the Covid shelving, the 1.75 km scheme with a 1.3 km elevated stretch, the deck dimensions, the ₹90 crore estimate and the Sarangpur institutional area
- Panel moots flyover from PGI to Sarangpur to end snarl-ups, The Tribune, on the five congestion zones, the causes of congestion, the rumble strips and the 200 foot widening
- Heritage panel seeks 3D view of proposed PGI-Sarangpur flyover, The Tribune, on the alignment change, the traffic data request and the Ministry of Home Affairs clearance
- Tribune flyover back on anvil, Chandigarh to re-invite bids, The Tribune, on the 2016 approval, the 11 February 2019 sanction, the 19 November 2019 Letter of Award, the RUN Club petition and the 30 April 2024 dismissal
- Central govt gives nod to Rs 247-cr grant for Tribune flyover, Nitin Jain, The Tribune, 30 September 2025, on the 24 September sanction order, the ₹245.09 crore revised estimate, the 33.39 percent escalation, the ₹35.54 crore utility deposit and the 16 to 18 month target
- At Rs 147.98 crore, lowest quote for Tribune flyover 31% below estimate, The Tribune, on the bid outcome, the ₹214.66 crore estimate, the project dimensions and the 30 month build period
- Day before high court hearing, Chandigarh awards Tribune flyover work, The Tribune, May 2026, on the award, the pending petition and the heritage and Master Plan grounds